An interview with Celtic manager Neil Lennon was featured on the latest edition of the BBC’s Sportsound Scottish Football Podcast. In that interview, Lennon talked about the Hoops’ performance versus Ross County last weekend and the Northern Irishman’s comments on his side’s performance in that game drew criticism from Tom English, who was one of the panellists on this show.
The Hoops were knocked out of the Scottish League Cup, a competition that they won in each of the last four seasons, due to Sunday’s 2-0 loss to Ross County.
Despite his side getting knocked out of the League Cup as a result of Sunday’s loss, Lennon declared that he “didn’t think there was a hell of a lot wrong with the performance” of his team versus Ross County and English took exception to that comment, later saying:
“I winced when I heard him just say there about the Ross County performance, ‘there was not a lot wrong with that performance’. I winced.
“He’s a man under pressure and obviously, he’s having to do a lot of press conferences, do a lot of talking, he’s eventually going to talk himself into unfortunate quotes.”
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TIF Thoughts on what English had to say about Lennon’s comments…
Considering that Sunday’s loss led to groups of unhappy Celtic fans forming outside of the Glasgow club’s Celtic Park stadium to air their grievances about Lennon and call for the 49-year-old to be sacked, perhaps the manager’s claim that he didn’t see “a hell of a lot wrong” with his side’s performance versus Ross County is unlikely to go down well with many fans of Celtic and with that in mind, maybe English’s reaction to his comment is understandable.
However, it may be fair to say that Lennon’s focus has still got to be on turning Celtic’s poor run of form around, as they still have what would be a historic 10th straight Premiership title to compete for this term.
As some Celtic fans have already given their players a hard time over this performance, is there any need for Lennon to publicly slam the squad for how they played versus Ross County as well?
Only time will tell if Lennon can successfully turn things around at Parkhead or not but perhaps it’s a bit harsh of English to pick apart the manager’s comments and criticise him for simply defending his team’s performance in public.